Cleveland Cavaliers Head Coach Kenny Atkinson was just named the 2024-25 NBA coach of the year, according to Shams Charania. It was announced on the TNT Tip-Off Show. Atkinson led the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference’s best record at 64-18 on the season and elevated Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland’s games. But the main success of his season was elevating Evan Mobley to the Defensive Player of the Year Award. Here is a more detailed assessment of Atkinson.
Cleveland Cavaliers Season In Review
Atkinson led the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed for the first time since the 2015-16 season, and it is interesting how he did it. He coached a really deep team in Cleveland this season as they arguably have the best nine player rotation in the league, especially after the DeAndre Hunter trade. Like I said at the beginning of this article, Atkinson was responsible for the ascension of Mobley this season.
He unlocked Mobley’s potential enough for him to also win a season award as well, the Defensive Player of the Year. Atkinson has always been a great coach in the league, and I thought he was unjustly fired from the Nets job back in the day when they decided to hire Steve Nash to appease Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. So with all of that being said, this is a deserving winner of the Coach of the Year award if I have ever seen it.
Final Thoughts
The Coach of the Year this year was a close race between Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff and him, but I think earning the No. 1 seed with a team that was probably the third seed at best in the preseason is what tipped it in favor of Atkinson. Bickerstaff was also deserving of the award after turning around a Pistons team that was at the bottom of the conference to the sixth seed within a year.
